


Breathing Fire

by foamcastle



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Multi, semi-au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-03 04:06:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foamcastle/pseuds/foamcastle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kojin is a young kitchen scullion in the Earth King's Palace, who by sheer chance finds herself joining Aang, Katara, Toph, and Sokka on their journey to the Fire Nation. How will her story change theirs? OC/Zuko, Tokka, mild Kataang. Semi-AU. Follows third season and beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (1)

**Author's Note:**

> I started this story in September of 2012. I decided to re-write it, personalize it. This is in diary/first person format, which means that some of this will be written in Kojin's diary, while some of it will be from her point of view. Please enjoy.

1892年3月13日

 

**3 Large Asparagus-Pears**

**AT LEAST 15 raspberrynanas**

**12 ounces of basilweed**

 

_Later_

Sorry, I was carrying this around in my bag and jotted down some shopping items. Hao offered me five asparagus-pears for the price of three. I ended up having to eat one of them on the train. Rolling fruit experimentally in your palm is, unfortunately, the easiest way to spoil it. So now my mouth has that grainy aftertaste I can’t stand.

I have no idea how to cook in the northern style, and neither does Cook Muraki (as if he’d ever let that sake bottle detach itself from his lips) but hey, if I can steal myself away to write in a journal, then I can steal myself away to read a cookbook in the library chambers.

The other day I found a little book—as kid’s book, about the spirits. It had the usual: the spirit of the sky, of the water, Wan Chi Tong, _he who knows ten thousand things_ , the moon spirit, all of them. I noticed one semi-amusing thing, though: Kojin was listed as the fire spirit. I know Kojin is both the spirit of the kitchen and of the hearth, but it’s been a long time since I heard any mention of Kojin being the spirit of fire. The last time someone told me Kojin is the fire spirit was that day I punched an ashy hole into the side of Mr. Fei’s courtyard.

Every time I think of that day this horrible surge seems to rush up inside me, threatening to burst out from under my skin. It’s like my bones want to free themselves from the confines of my flesh… No, I changed my mind. It’s beyond bones. It’s something else. It’s in my blood. Sometimes it seems to burn holes into my lungs, and I sometimes take these shaky exhales and I swear to the spirits sparks fly off my tongue. That explains the burn marks on some of the pages in the book. Whatever. ~~It doesn’t matter.~~

I lied. I just had to sit in my closet and light tiny fires with my fingers oh spirits I hate myself I hate myself I’m a disgrace.

I’ve been thinking there’s something odd going on in the palace since Long Feng got taken out. What would I know? I only send out the food. _I’ve_ only ever seen the King in passing. Ha ha, maybe someone’s plotting a coup. Something about that “war nobody’s meant to know about” but somehow the entire staff is aware. I don’t know, maybe I’m luckier than most staff. I doubt the maids get to leave the city to find rare Kiba root for the King’s favorite sick soup. Oh, lucky me. I get to breach the walls but I haven’t seen my family in nearly ten years.

I wonder what Natsuko looks like now. Is she pretty like Mother? Or ugly like me? It’s funny, I looked at myself in the mirror in passing and thought I looked presentable but it was clearly a trick of the light because I looked back, properly, and my qipao was nearly totally open, my breasts tumbling out of the slit like apple-plants out of a basket. And my face was a mess. Ignoring the mess of soy sauce and Mirin that had somehow made it to my cheeks, making me look like a dark, blotchy-skinned demon, my pimples were in such large numbers they might as well have started a tea shop and invited in customers from the First Quarter. Ha-ha. Someday, when I’m far away from Ba Sing Se, I should go into comedy. In any case, I’ve always hoped that one day I piss off an earthbender enough that he hits me in the face with a rock so hard that at least I have an excuse to look this bad.

It’s getting late. I should head to the kitchen. Maybe if it’s empty enough I can go through that courtyard with the cypresses, it’s such a nice day. The sun is just setting.

 

_Later_

 

            This diary is all I have. I’m writing with a piece of charcoal. I don’t know how I can explain what happened. I’m flying on a beast I’ve only heard about in stories. I’m with the Avatar. He may be dead. I’m cold. I’m alone. All for now.


	2. (2)

My diary, which used to feel like a familiar friend, feels cold in my hands. The leather no longer bears the same warmth, and the pages don’t beckon to me like they did back in the palace. But I know I need to write. I feel that same itching in my fingers. I don’t know where to start.

            “How about a date?” Katara says. She’s too kind. She always has been. She healed my ears, slept in the same room as me when dreams of blue lightning, lightning that never touched me, plagued my nights. We stayed up late and laughed, even when it seemed like laughter had been sucked out of the world. And she was right, so right. I always start with a date.

 

_1892_ _年_ _4_ _月_ _0_ _9_ _日_

_I’m on a ship. It’s been a few weeks since my seemingly nondescript last entry. I’m not really sure how to start this entry out. There’s so much to say, and my hands still shake._  

“I’m going to go up on deck. Write as much as you need to.” I grunt in response, without turning around. I feel bad, but Katara bends my tea just a little bit warmer and shuts the metal door hard behind her.

_I ended by saying that I was going to go through the courtyard to the kitchen. I did. I made a short detour to the food archives to see if I could find anything on Northern style cooking. I didn’t, so I kept on walking. I remember the long cypress shadows dwarfing my own, and for the first time in my life feeling smaller than anything._

_It made me so aware of the blood burning inside of me._

_I found a cave._

_The burning called to me. I went in. I was wearing my dirty green kitchen qipao and holding nothing but this diary and a bag of fruit. The only trinket from home I still had was the red brooch. I shouldn’t be attached to material things but I lost all the letters from Natsuko, from Mother. I lost Mother’s gold-trimmed kimono and all the money I ever stole from Muraki. My whole life, tucked in a wooden chest under a bunk in the western servant’s quarters in the Earth King’s palace in Ba Sing Se. I never called it home but now I think I should have._

_It was so dark. I tripped over stones and ripped my sandals open. It took me so much willpower to not light a fire in my palm. The burning kept surfacing. I breathed sparks like I do when I’m angry. Then I lit a tiny fire at the end of my finger, no larger than the fire at the end of a match. I rolled my sleeve up and kept my arm at a distance, like I was trying to prove to myself that my arm didn’t belong to me._

_I thought the crystal catacombs were legend. This, among many other things, was a lie._

_I reached the catacombs and found chaos. Five very different people were in the throes of an intense fight. There was the brown-skinned girl (she I noticed first), the boy with the blue tattoos, the boy with the burned eye, the old man, and the girl in green. I know now that they are called Katara, Aang, Zuko, Iroh, and Azula._

_It was so hard to understand what happened. I saw firebenders for the first time in my life. I kept thinking that I wish I’d been trained so I could help, but then that high-pitched cackling voice in my head laughed in my face: “help who?” it asked. And I was soberly reminded of_ why _I had to hide my firebending all my life,_ why _I had kept such an integral part of myself secret for so long._

_The Fire Nation was the enemy._

            I took a long, rattling breath. It felt like I’d kept it in for hours. I put out my candle and lit it again.

            _Aang did something incredible (Katara tells me it’s called the Avatar State) but Azula shot him down. Then everything went slowly. I helped carry Aang through a passageway to this huge behemoth I thought was the stuff of fairytales. We all sat on the saddle. I rubbed the Avatar’s temples with Asparagus-pear meat, feeling my fingertips tingle and hoping his mind would ease. Katara bent water from a vial and pressed it into Aang’s back. He was okay. Ba Sing Se, not so much._

_I fell asleep after that. I woke up right at dawn like I’m used to, feeling oddly weightless. We were flying over desert, towards the coast. I picked up a piece of charcoal from the folds of the Earth King’s robes and wrote my last entry._

_I've spent the last few weeks recovering. Everyone has been. Emotionally as well as physically. Aang is still asleep. While I’ve befriended his whole group of friends and travelers, he has no idea who I am or why I’m on this hijacked Fire Nation ship. Hell, I don’t even know why I’m here._

I shut my diary. I breathe a little, but it comes out hoarse, ragged. I can feel the sparks smoldering at the back of my throat. I poke my head out of the porthole and exhale. A smallish wave of fire seeps out of my mouth, leaving my lips dry but unharmed. I feel appeased, for now. I slap some water onto my face and head out of the door without looking up at the mirror above the water basin. I haven’t looked in a mirror since Ba Sing Se. I don’t want to see what I look like now.


	3. (3)

Katara, Toph, and I were craning our necks over the edge of the starboard side of the ship, not speaking much. Toph was crushing and uncrushing a sheet of iron in her hand. Katara buried her head in the crook of her elbow. I was looking out at the dark ocean, tracing the seam between sea and sky with my eyes. I felt that surge again. I exhaled out of my nose, feeling the insides of my nostrils burn as if I were holding my head too close above a fire. I cleared my throat and silenced the itch, for now.

            I jumped at a bang somewhere behind me. I whipped my head around, too bewildered to understand what who it was that had just fallen.

            “Twinkle Toes, that has to be you!” Toph shrieked, running towards him. Katara followed behind her. I started to join, but realized (again) that until he and I were introduced, I was a complete stranger. So I sat back, and waited. But before I could finally contribute, Aang fell back, as quickly as he had fallen forward in the first place. Then, I finally kneeled next to Katara,

            Sokka turned to me, taking off his mask. “He’ll come to soon enough. We all want you two to get to know each other.”

            Frustratedly rather than worriedly, I muttered,“That’s not my main priority. How is he going to take it when he finds out I’m a firebender?”

            “He’ll be _fiiiiiiine_ ,” Sokka cajoled, “he used to have a best friend that was a firebender.” _Oh. Thanks. That really helps._ My anger flared dangerously, turning into a sour mixture of rage and indignance.

            “The past is the past. Who nearly fucking killed him, Sokka? A firebender. _Don’t_ patronize me.”

            “Oo, kitty got claws!” Toph appeared behind Sokka, wrapping her tiny arms firmly around his waist.

            “Shut up!” I barked, and sparks started to fly from my nostrils. My fingertips burst into tiny flames, forcing both of them to recoil: the skinny boy in Fire Nation regalia and the tiny earthbender that could have killed me, even on this metal crate we called a ship. There was a silence between the three of us so thick, I’m sure Aang might have been able to bend it.

            “I’m sorry.” I grumbled, digging my steaming fingers into my palm, keeping my fists safe at my sides.

            “It’s… it’s okay,” Sokka replied. He stepped a few feet backwards, detaching himself from Toph, who _harrumph_ ed. His eyes were wide. I’d scared him. _Shit._

“Sokka, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out.” I started towards him, but he turned around to face the water.

            “Kojin, it’s fine. I just need some time to get used to… whatever.” He walked around me, back to Aang’s lifeless body. He crouched next to Katara, smiling like usual. Aang stirred, just slightly, and Katara exhaled in relief.

            Aang picked himself up, his skinny body seeming almost doll-like in its weak, robotic movements. He rubbed his eyes a little, and one of Hakoda’s men draped a cloak over his shoulders. Surprisingly enough, Aang started chattering like a Mocking-Ape, asking question after question, leaving no spaces between breaths for anyone to answer. I turned around and leaned my upper body over the side of the ship, letting the weight of my chest try to balance with the weight from my behind. It was a fun game to play on my own. Didn’t really change the fact that I was alone, though. Everyone else was fawning over Aang, helping him gather his bearings. I was a stranger. The most I knew was through the other people in the group, and even there, holes were left in stories. Holes that to everyone else seemed easy to fill. But this was the first time I’d ever left the Earth Kingdom, and even my forays outside Ba Sing Se never amounted to more than a mile or two out of town. These were worldly travelers, people who hadn’t seen their family in months, and in Katara and Sokka’s sake, years. My family was in the palace. My palace family never treated me well or even considered me kin, but nothing can erase what I felt for them. Even here, on a ship with people I should have considered close friends—even with Katara on board, I felt so utterly alone.

I turned my head to the deck for a second. Everyone was gone. I felt good, in a way. At least my loneliness didn’t have an audience. I looked back down into the water, removing my hands from the edge and letting them dangle, finally clasping them together and stretching out my tired limbs. In the secrecy of my solitude, I formed a small fireball in between my hands, illuminating the water with a strange reddish glow. I saw my reflection for the first time in weeks. It was nowhere close to a real vision of what I looked like, what with the constantly shifting black water slapping the side of the ship, and the fact that my fireball, though potent, wavered still. I had the firebending skills of a child. I could create flames to my heart’s desire—it was controlling them that was terrifying.

I heard footsteps clanging on the cold ground and extinguished the flame immediately.

I turned around to the Water Tribe soldier.

“Katara wants you in the healing room.” My heart found a cozy spot to hang out somewhere in my upper throat.

“Are you sure?” I swallowed, hard. “I think Aang and I can meet some other time, don’t you?”

“She seemed urgent. I would go.”

“Ugh, okay. Thanks.” I slinked up the stairs to the healing room, tying my hair up in a passable bun and tightening my still-dirty qipao. I stood in front of the door for a number of moments, allowing my hand to hover over the door before finally knocking.

“Come in!” I hear Katara, in her singsong ‘everything’s going to be fine’ voice.

I open the door a crack, and see Aang lying down, having a semi-lively conversation with Katara. She turned to me and gave me the brightest smile I’d ever been given. I felt a soothing warmth deep in my belly, and my breaths started to come evenly.

“Aang, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

“Whazzat?” He chirped, turning his head towards me. I approached, cautiously.

“I’m Kojin. I’m from Ba Sing Se.”

“Nice to meet you, Kojin. I’m Aang.”

“I know who you are.” I said. It came out too curtly, though, and I smiled awkwardly to reassure him. It didn’t work.

“I’m sorry if this is rude, but why did you join us?”

I inhaled sharply, nervously. This was still a sore spot.

“I… uh. Found you guys by chance. I helped Katara get you out of the catacombs somehow. I can’t remember how I got there or how we got out. It’s like something in my head wants me to forget. Katara’s healing has helped a little but I wake up with bad dreams about things I can’t remember. So I don’t _actually_ know how I’m here. It was just chance.”

I moved closer to Aang’s bed, scooting myself next to to Katara.

“The Earth Kingdom’s gone. That palace was my life. I cooked there. I awakened your mind with asparagus-pear meat. But it was the spirit water that really helped you.”

Katara rested a hand on my back, “Kojin hasn’t known anything other than the kitchen at the palace and the markets outside of town. She left everything behind to save you.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Katara.” I said, rolling my eyes a little. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Katara smiled gently. “It’s all right.”

Aang finally spoke, moving his torso up and leaning back on his forearms, “Thank you so much for helping me. You don’t know how much it means to me.” He held my hand with both of his, holding it to his forehead and shutting his eyes, “Thank you.” He said again.

“Jin, don’t you think you have something else to tell Aang?” Katara asked when he let go of my hand.

“Ugh, _spirits_.” I groaned.

“What is it?” Aang’s eyes lit up in curiosity.

“…I’m a firebender.” I admitted, in a voice so tiny I’m surprised he even heard it.

“Whoa! Really? How is that even possible…? Wait, are you Azula’s agent? Why are you on this ship with us? KATARA. WHY IS SHE ON THE SHIP WITH US.”  
            “Stop it, you sound just like Sokka.” Katara chided. She turned to me and nodded towards Aang, “Go on. Tell him.”

“I… think I’m a mistake.”

Aang settled down, his body losing the tension it had just moments ago, “Go on…”

“My parents lived in the outer quarter of Ba Sing Se. My mom sold baskets and my dad worked in a warehouse. Both of them were non-benders. We haven’t had benders in the family for generations. When I was born, they thought I had a fever because I was so hot. I was breathing hot air for so long. They thought I would die, but it was natural for me. I grew out of the heat but the heat turned into something worse… and I don’t even know what to call it. It’s like this burning, itching, desperate feeling dying to get out of me. I think most children in the fire nation know how to control it. Or fix it. I don’t know. I remember when I was thirteen, I’d just hit puberty, and I was feeling it more and more, especially in the summer. So that summer when I was thirteen I stayed in the house. I realized that when I sat in the sun the burning seemed to get closer and closed to the edge of my skin. So I stayed home, fanned myself, and didn’t speak to anyone. And then one day it happened.”

“What happened?” Aang asked excitedly. Katara shushed him, and I giggled. I knew the burning seemed to subside when I was with Katara, but with Aang it felt as if I’d never had it. His calm, grey eyes hinted at wisdom beyond his years, and it was hard to look at him without smiling a little.

“Well, I was sitting in the courtyard weaving baskets for my mom. I was in the shade for the most part, so I was okay. But then Won, the neighborhood creep, showed up. He tried to touch me. I was only thirteen, and, uh… well, I firebended at him. And I don’t know how I did it, but I punched the wall somehow, left a black ashy mark. I didn’t burn him, but he didn’t get what happened. He never bothered me again, and he couldn’t anyway—the next year I was sent to the palace kitchens like I was promised. And I ignored the fact that I fucking firebended, and I’m from the earth kingdom, and the fire nation is the enemy? I don’t know. But that’s my story.”

“That’s incredible, Kojin. Sounds like a scroll story.”

“Thanks. When I was working in the kitchens I had a lot of alone time but I never bent fire seriously. It was only ever a little flame on my finger in the dark. But since I got on this ship, I’ve started bending more. I can bend as much fire as I want but I can’t control it. So that’s something we have in common. We both need someone to teach us to control ourselves. We need firebending teachers.”

“You’re right. We’ll find them.”


End file.
